There are Films and there are movies. Films with a capital 'F' strive for artistic merit, thematic depth and subtle, nuanced delivery. Movies are just plain fun, requiring little from the audience short of its attention for a couple of hours. Director Peyton (Bring It On) Reed's latest effort Down With Love is proud to be a movie with a lowercase 'm.' It's exuberant, funny and beautiful to look at: the perfect summer distraction.

Set in 1963, the movie opens as Maine author Barbara Novak (Renee Zellweger) arrives in New York City to meet with the publisher of her new book, Down With Love. Accompanied by editor Vicki Hiller (Sarah Paulson), Novak presents the volume, a self-help manual for women, to the publisher's executive team. Using her method, says Novak, the single woman can free herself from the bonds of romantic love and enjoy sex as a man does: a la carte. Predictably, the...Read the entire review

Hayao Miyazaki is considered by many to be Japan's greatest animation director. Since the mid-1980s, Miyazaki has made a series of films of such advanced artistic merit that they've redefined the anime genre. The success of features including My Neighbor Totoro, Castle in the Sky, Princess Mononoke and, most recently, Spirited Away, made Miyazaki a household name across Asia. With the help of a theatrical and video distribution deal with Disney, he's also made major inroads in the United States.

Miyazaki is a singular figure in the world of feature length animation. He's a masterful storyteller, capable of weaving engrossing tales with spare, impressionistic strokes. His ability to create deeply nuanced, multi-dimensional characters is unparalleled in the genre. Miyazaki conjures up entire worlds, full of history and subt...Read the entire review

The genre that would later be known as anime came to America in 1963 with the debut of the television version of Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy. The black and white cartoon was about the adventures of a cute, heroic robot-boy and featured Tezuka's distinctive Disney-inspired characters. Astro Boy was an immediate success in the states and was followed by a handful of similar programs. But it wasn't until 1967 when the full-color adventures of a racecar driver named Speed hit the small screen that anime became mainstream in the U.S.

Where Tezuka had drawn on Walt Disney for inspiration, Speed Racer's creator Tatsuo Yoshida is said to have wanted to make a more realistic series, in the mold of Max Fleisher's Superm...Read the entire review

Though I'm 38 years old and about a generation away from the original Beatlemania phenomenon, I've been a huge fan of The Beatles for as long as I can remember. My brother gave me a copy of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band for my 12th birthday and my obsession with the Fab Four hasn't abated since. To this day I consider them my favorite band, so it was with great pleasure that I opened up the new 8-disc DVD release of Apple Music's Beatles Anthology.

Produced in 1995 by the (then) remaining three living Beatles, Yoko Ono and Neil Aspinall, Anthology is a monumental documentary spanning the entire career of the band from the boys' Liverpool days, through Beatlemania and right up to their breakup in 1970. Logging in at nearly 11 hours, Anthology is comprehensive to say the least. The documentary is composed of footage gath...Read the entire review

In 1947 the idea that a major Hollywood studio would make a film about anti-Semitism must have seemed almost inconceivable. The subject of racial prejudice wasn't considered mainstream like it is now and it was clear that addressing it on the big screen would be a risky proposition. Director Elia Kazan and producer Darryl Zanuck were willing to take that risk, though, and the result was a film that would go on to win the Academy Award for best picture.

Starring Gregory Peck and Dorothy McGuire, Gentleman's Agreement tells the story of a maverick journalist who sets out to write a series of articles on anti-Semitism. In order to research the series, Philip Green (Peck) goes undercover as a Jew. This is a fairly standard Hollywood plot line these days (we've seen men pose as women, whites as blacks, etc.) but at the time it was unique.

I first became aware of Margaret Cho back in the early 1990's when she made frequent late-night TV appearances doing standup comedy. In those days Cho's act centered on her experiences as a Korean American, her childhood, her bout with an eating disorder and especially her relationship with her quirky mother. It was fairly standard material for the time but there was something about Cho's delivery that stood out in my mind. One moment she was the typical happy-go-lucky California girl, eminently American in her delivery. Then, in the wink of an eye, she'd transform herself into the spitting image of her fish-out-of-water Korean-born mother. She achieved this transformation with the simplest of gestures, facial expressions and a dead on imitation of her mother's accent and delivery. By switching back and forth between these two personas Cho was able to recreate humor...Read the entire review

It's virtually impossible to talk about the history of photography without at least mentioning Ansel Adams. In fact, to many students of the form, Adams is almost synonymous with fine art photography. His images are pervasive throughout American popular culture and are instantly recognizable to even the most casual photography enthusiasts.

The American Experience: Ansel Adams is a documentary film on the acclaimed photographer by Rick Burns, brother of well-known producer/director Ken Burns. Though not sporting the same level of name recognition as his brother, Rick Burns is a consummate director in his own right, and Ansel Adams is a worthy addition to the Burns brother's ever-evolving tapestry of American documentaries.

Few subjects seem so perfectly suited to the Burns' style as Ansel Adams. Both Rick and Ken use their camera to pan a...Read the entire review

There's a new trend in CD publication that may be a reaction to the buying public's increasing hesitancy to spend nearly twenty dollars for discs that contain nothing but music. The trend is to reduce MSRP and add special features. The most common form of ancillary content found on many of today's new releases is simple QuickTime video and/or Shockwave presentations that are written right on the CD itself. But a new form of extra is gaining popularity: the bonus DVD.

The Donnas 'Spend the Night' retails for well under twenty dollars and early pressings of the disc include a bonus DVD (note: the CD itself also contains a video in QuickTime format). The digital music wars that have been ripping the industry apart for the last few years have tarnished the names of many big labels to such an extent that they need to do something to restore confidence in their produ...Read the entire review

Well, that was the cheeky review I was anticipating having to write but as it turns out, The Ring is more than the usual teen horror film. In fact, The Ring succeeds in a number of areas I wasn't expecting it to. Instead of walking away from the theater feeling bilked out of eight dollars I found myself going over the many eerie set pieces and relishing the visual spectacle I'd just witnessed.

By now you've probably already heard a number of things about the film including that it's based on a very successful Japanese release called Ringu. If you've seen the trailer you know the central conceit is that a supernatural videocassette kills viewers exactly seven days after watching it. Because The Ring relies on switchbacks, sudden shocks and unexpected plot turns I'm going to address it in the most gener...Read the entire review

Make no mistake about it. Kino International, through its complete reconstruction and restoration of the science fiction classic Metropolis, has given film fans an invaluable gift. For the first time since its initial German release of 1926 we're able to see Metropolis in a form that's substantially close to director Fritz Lang's original vision.

Long recognized as one of the great films of the silent era and a giant in the science fiction pantheon, Metropolis was until recently a mere shadow of its former self. Almost from the day of its release the movie was cut and re-cut by both German and American distributors who felt that it was too long and too convoluted to connect with the average audience. The result was a mish-mash of prints, some o...Read the entire review

Unlike many in my age group (I was born in the mid 1960s) my first exposure to Sir Alec Guinness wasn't through the original Star Wars pictures. Rather, it was the quirky British comedy The Horse's Mouth that introduced me to one of the great screen actors of all time and permanently etched his character from the film on my impressionable mind.

The Horse's Mouth is a story about the nature of creativity and society's interaction with the creative individual. Guinness (who adapted the screenplay from a popular novel) plays Gulley Jimson, an eccentric painter whose success as a young man seems to have abandoned him in middle age. Having fallen out of favor with the critics as his style matured Jimson reacts by putting down his brushes and taking up the grift as a way of life. From his base (a boat moored on the Thames) Jimson plies his new craft of bilking form...Read the entire review

What do you get when you mix equal parts of Charlie Parker, Star Wars and Otaku? You get about the coolest Anime series to come out of Japan in decades! Cowboy Bebop was originally produced in 1998 by Sunrise Inc. and ran for twenty-six episodes. The series was directed by Shinichiro Watanabe (Macross), written by Keiko Nobumoto (Tokyo Dragon) and features character designs by Toshihiro Kawamoto (Ghost in the Shell, Escaflowne). This super-team of creators gave birth to a program that struck a chord with both Japanese and American audiences and that has, in the short time since it's o...Read the entire review

To modern animation fans John Kricfalusi (known as John K.) is something of a legend in his own time. His distinguished career has featured some stunning highs and a series of rather startling lows, all of which were visited upon him by executives who had little understanding of his art.

John K's first major impact on the contemporary zeitgeist occurred while working with Ralf Backshi on The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse. John, a young and inspired artist, had already developed a keen sense of humor that featured a love for innuendo. He worked on the scripting and animation of several episodes but when Mighty Mouse appeared to sniff some white powder John K's stint on the show was abrupt...Read the entire review

The Robots of Death may not be the greatest Dr. Who adventure but it certainly is one of the most tightly scripted and classically formulaic of the Tom Baker era. Coming between Faces of Evil and (one of the best Baker episodes) The Talons of Wen-Chiang, The Robots of Death originally aired in four parts from January 29th through February 19th 1977.

The story is straight Science Fiction. When the Doctor and his newly acquired companion Leela arrive on a gargantuan mining ship they find themselves in the middle of a murder mystery. One by one the crew of the Sandminer is being killed off, but by whom? The ship's off...Read the entire review

There's no question that I walked into the latest addition to George Lucas's Star Wars saga with low expectations. The deafening hype surrounding the release of Episode One: The Phantom Menace in 1999 and the Jar-Jar Binks inspired let down that followed left me more than a little disillusioned with the entire Star Wars franchise. As the saying goes: "once bitten, twice shy" and that certainly described my mindset going into an opening night screening of Episode Two: Attack of the Clones. Would it stumble into the same traps that rendered Phantom Menace so lackluster or would it be able to rekindle that elusive Star Wars magic? The answer is a resounding 'Yes' and 'Yes.'

Another 'Menace'?

The first thing that anyone who sees Attack of the Clones is going to point out is that it's better than Phantom Menace. You'll get no argument from me on that account...Read the entire review

The Caves of Androzani:The long running British series Dr. Who is a unique phenomenon in the realm of Science Fiction fandom. Debuting in the mid 1960s the program was targeted at young children but featured plot lines and situations that could be appreciated by teens and adults as well. The craggy old Doctor flew around the galaxy traversing both space and time in a blue police box known as the Tardis. This strange contraption, small on the outside but vastly larger on the inside, propelled the Doctor and his companions into situations involving everything from robots and aliens to supernatural monsters and even well known historical scenarios.

The Movie:Woody Allen is what you might call a self referential film maker. Over the course of his career he's come back again and again to the same elements, investing a new spin each time. The relationships in his later films are informed those of the earlier, the jokes tend to relate on one level or another to the greater body of his work and always at the center is his relentless self examination. Keeping up with Allen's evolving style and picking up on the many in-jokes is all a part of being a fan.

In Allen's 1985 release The Purple Rose of Cairo the clever director turns his formula inside out and places his focus on the nature of celebrity and the cultural impact o...Read the entire review

The Movie:Woody Allen is most closely associated with comedies about neurotic men and the women they love. Over the years he's developed that idea in a number of interesting ways. One of the most innovative attempts is the 1983 release Zelig. This fascinating film is filled with Allen's wry humor but it goes beyond the typical Allen fare by offering a technical masterpiece the likes of which had never been seen up to that time.

The plot revolves around an introverted man named Leonard Zelig who, in his misguided attempt to fit in with those around him, develops the uncanny ability to take on their physical and mental attributes. When placed in a room with fat men Zelig grows in size. When s...Read the entire review

The Movie:To director Martin Scorsese's credit he was reluctant to remake 1962's B movie classic Cape Fear. How, he reasoned, could one improve on such a perfect film? Scorsese's longtime colleague and close friend Robert De Niro lobbied the director for years and in 1990 he relented and production on the remake began. The result, though artistically weak, would become Scorsese's most financially successful film.

The plot of Cape Fear follows the original almost to the letter. Ex -con Max Cady (Robert De Nero) is released from jail and immediately begins stalking his former pu...Read the entire review

The Movie:Sam Bowden (Gregory Peck) is a successful prosecuting attorney with a lovely wife (Lori Martin as Nancy Bowden) and daughter (Polly Bergen as Peggy Bowden), a nice home and an idyllic life. Everything seems to be going well for Sam until a man he convicted of assault eight years earlier finishes his prison term and arrives in town. Max Cady (Robert Mitchum) is a wild eyed low life bent on revenge and he sets about stalking and terrorizing the Bowden family with frightening monomania. Sam enlists the help of Police Chief Mark Dutton (Martin Balsam) to keep an eye on Cady but the ex-con continues his harassment. When Ca...Read the entire review

The Movie:In the Mood for Love made quite a splash amongst American critics when it was released here in December of 2000 and after viewing it on this Chinese import disc it's readily apparent why. Director and Writer Kar-wai Wong has assembled one of the most cinematically literate and emotionally poignant films to come out of any nation in recent years. In the Mood for Love is a work of high art that exhibits a level of subtlety and depth rarely seen these days.

The film begins when two married couples move into apartments across a hall from each other. The husband of one couple and the wife of the other immediately depart for reasons that seem at first unrelated. Soon...Read the entire review

The Movie:When he set out to make Armageddon, director Gordon Chan had the X-Files in mind. He wanted to make a Hong Kong film that could compete with American action movies and one that incorporated supernatural elements a-la the hit Fox show. Though the film was made on what Hollywood would consider a shoestring budget it looks slick, has interesting special effects and features good performances by the principal actors. Unfortunately it's also deeply flawed in terms of plot and script.

The Movie:Encapsulating any of Bergman's films is a monumental task. The Swedish director is one of the giants of cinema and an artist of the first order no matter what the medium. His stylistic films are at once deeply symbolic and tantalizingly naturalistic. Bergman was able to see the complexity of human existence and to breathe its rich textures into his films almost effortlessly.

Cries and Whispers is a prime example of Bergman at the height of his artistic prowess. The plot concerns three sisters in ...Read the entire review

The Movie:Jerzy Kosinski's novel Being There appeared in the late 60s to much critical and popular acclaim. The book concerns a simple-minded man named Chance who tends the gardens of a wealthy Washington DC resident. Chance is a mysterious fellow. We know nothing about his background other than that he seems to have spent his entire life at his employer's estate, that he's a meticulous tender of plants, trees and shrubs and that the only thing he enjoys as much as gardening is watching TV.

Early in the novel Chance's patron dies and the enigmatic gardener is cast out into a cold harsh world. Though Chance is wholly unprepared to deal with anything more challenging than flickering images on the small scree...Read the entire review

The Movie: Some situations and characters in movies and literature speak to such universal themes that they instantly become part of the popular lexicon. Such is the case with director Archie Mayo's 1932 film Svengali. Based on George du Maurier's popular novel Trilby, the story concerns an eccentric old Parisian (John Barrymore in the title role) who has the uncanny ability to place people under this powerful thrall through the use of hypnotism. At the outset Svengali seems a rather comic figure, bumbling about, asking his friends for money etc. but when he meets a beautiful young singer (Marion Marsh as Trilby) he takes a turn for the sinister. Svengali uses his power to capture the girl's mind and bend her talent to his evil purposes. Before too long Trilby, through Svenga...Read the entire review

The Movie:Let me begin this review by saying that the Coneheads skits on the original Saturday Night Live were among my favorite segments. There was something so completely over the top and surreal about the pieces that I couldn't help but break into uncontrollable laughter. I of course am not alone in my assessment so it's no big surprise that Loren Michaels made the Coneheads into a full fledged feature film in 1993.

If you've seen any of the original skits you'll probably have a pretty good idea of what to expect from this movie. Dan Aykroyd and Jane Curtin reprise their roles as Beldar and Prymatt, two aliens who find themselves stranded on Earth. The film follows their ...Read the entire review

The Movie:Loosely based on the life of famed photographer Richard Avadon, Funny Face is a seminal film on a number of levels. For starters its a classic musical of the first order featuring a fantastic score by George and Ira Gershwin. Next there's the amazingly beautiful art direction supervised by Avadon himself (and employing many of his own photographs.) Leonard Gershe's writing and Stanley Dohen's direction are absolutely top notch and finally there are the polished performances by Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn, both of whom were at the height of their artistic prowess. For all these reasons Funny Face is one of my all time favorite films.

The Movie:In 1964 Paramount Pictures attempted to recapture the magic of the hit Audrey Hepburn vehicle Sabrina by teaming her up again with that film's costar William Holden. They sent the two stars to Paris for the location shoot along with director Richard Quine and a screenplay by George Axelrod to shoot the film Paris When it Sizzles. Unfortunately for all concerned the result was a movie that almost immediately took the nickname Paris When it Fizzles. The film was a disaster both in the box-office and for the principles themselves.

Paris When it Sizzles was supposed to be a light romantic comedy in the tradition of Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief. William Holden is a deadbeat scriptwriter (working for Paramount Pi...Read the entire review

The Movie:Neil Jordan is perhaps best known for his 1992 film The Crying Game, a moody and controversial film that cemented his reputation as a major force in Hollywood. Jordan is a writer, a poet and a director of great skill whose credits also include Interview with the Vampire and In Dreams. This month Criterion released one of Jordan's best films Mona Lisa.

Released in 1986, Mona Lisa is a deeply layered and rewarding film that feels like a throwback to the great anti-hero films of the 1970s including Scorsese's Taxi Driver. The story revolves around a slightly thick ex con named George (Bob Hoskins) and a high-class hooker called Simone (Cathy Tyson). As the film opens George has ju...Read the entire review

The Movie:It's been said before but it bears repeating; Hollywood tends to avoid the innovative and go with what they know. You see it over and over again: A spate of summer blockbusters that all have the same theme. There was the rogue meteor year (Armageddon and Deep Impact), the 'fake reality year' (Dave TV and the Truman Show) and most recently the Mars mission year. Unfortunately, this most recent example of the phenomenon is represented by two films with little if any merit. Neither Mission to Mars nor Red Planet was met with critical and box office success, which is a shame given the great potential, these films had.

Red Planet has all sorts of plot devices. There's a robot on the rampage, a stranded crew seeking rescue from t...Read the entire review

The Movie:1974's Death Wish was made at the height of Hollywood's obsession with anti-hero films. Charles Bronson, in a role that would firmly cement his status as a major star, plays dyed-in-the-wool liberal Paul Kersey. A successful architect, Kersey is a happy family man with a beautiful wife and a newly wed daughter. His upper middle class New York lifestyle seems idyllic until one afternoon when three street punks (one of whom is played by Jeff Goldblum in his first big screen role) attack his wife and rape his daughter. By the time Kersey arrives at the hospital his wife has died from her wounds and his daughter has slipped into deep post-traumatic psychosis. Kersey tries to deal with...Read the entire review

The Movie:The political thriller enjoys a long and rich history. Early Hollywood produced many patriotic dramas, most notable among them the films of Frank Capra including Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. Later, as our nation matured and the viewing public became more cynical, movies including All the President's Men, The Candidate and The Parallax View ruled the day. Contemporary Hollywood seems to have turned its back on the form though, which is very strange given the volatile and contentious nature of current partisan struggles over national agenda a...Read the entire review

The Movie:1988's low budget comedy Tapeheads saw limited theatrical release and little critical acclaim but the Mike Nesmith produced project staring Tim Robbins and John Cusack didn't simply roll over into obscurity. Over the years since its initial run Tapeheads, thanks to independent theaters and home video, has become something of a cult classic. This offbeat and, for its time, innovative comedy holds up in many respects today and thanks to the DVD format is sure to find an even larger audience in the years to come.

The story of Tapeheads concerns two failing security guards (Robbins and Cusack) who get fed up with their jobs and deci...Read the entire review

The Movie: The first batch of Warner's Short Cinema Journal DVD releases featured radical menu designs, a magazine like approach to the material and collections of award winning shorts selected to conform to an overall theme. As more discs were produced Warner seems to have lost sight of that original vision. Short 9: Trust is the widest variation to date. Short 9 has much more static and intuitive menus than its predecessors, the Trust subtitle is applicable in only the loosest of terms and the magazine metaphor is almost completely gone. Though the anoying advertisments are also gone (previous releases made viewers sit through ads for Nissan, Coke and others) much of the compelling nature of the product see...Read the entire review

The Movie:Beginning in the 1950s and continuing to this day Gerry Anderson produced a stringof bizarre science fiction television programs for British television. The strangestof them all was Thunderbirds, which featured Star Trek-like action played earnestlyby marionettes. Anderson's program including UFO, The Protectors and Thunderbirdseventually made it to US television and became cult classics but none was moresuccessful than Space: 1999.

Staring Martin Landau (Commander John Koenig) and Barbara Bain (Dr. Helena Russell),Space: 1999 was intended to compete with both Star Trek in America and Dr. Whoin Britain. It combined the fantastic stories and surreal ...Read the entire review